The Sea, the Sea

over a nearby rock, watching Titus perform. The boy, showing off of course, swam like a dolphin, graceful, playful, a white swift flashing curving form, giving glimpses of sudden hands and heels, active shoulders, pale buttocks, and a wet exuberant laughing face framed in clinging seaweed hair. His sea-darkened hair certainly changed his appearance, became dark and straight, adhering to his neck and shoulders, plastering his face, making him look like a girl. Aware of the effect, he charmingly tossed his head and drew the heavy sopping locks back out of his eyes and off his brow. He had the effortless crawl which I have never mastered, and in his marine joy kept diving vertically under, vanishing and reappearing somewhere else with a triumphant yell. Equal mad delight possessed me, and the sea was joyful and the taste of the salt water was the taste of hope and joy. I kept laughing, gurgling water, spouting, whirling. Meeting my sea-dervish companion I shouted, ‘Now aren’t you glad you came to me?’

‘Yes, yes, yes!’

Of course he had no difficulty climbing up the little steep cliff. After all, had I not first seen him like a fly upon that tower? I had a slight difficulty myself and a bad moment, but concealed it from him. It was rather too early to start losing face and seeming old. I wanted him to accept me as a comrade. After that, in the shade of a rock, he slept. After that we had a substantial tea. And after that he agreed to stay the night, just the night and leave early the next day. I had meanwhile confiscated and hidden his two plastic bags in case he should suddenly take it into his head to slip away. I looked into the bags, there was precious little in them: shaving things, underwear, a decent striped shirt, a tie, shoes, a much creased and folded cotton jacket. Some expensive cuff links in a velvet box. The love poems of Dante, in Italian and English, in a de luxe edition with risque engravings. The last two items made me think a bit.

Of course Gilbert, now fully aware of our visitor’s identity, was in a scarcely controllable state of excitement and curiosity. ‘What are you going to do with him?’ ‘Wait and see.’ ‘I know what I’d like to do!’ ‘For God’s sake just keep out of our way.’ ‘All right, I know my place!’

At my suggestion Titus had rinsed his hair in fresh water. Dried and combed it became fluffy, a thick mass of spiralling red-brown tendrils, and much improved his appearance. In the evening he put on the cleanish shirt, but not the cuff links. Gilbert surreptitiously washed the Leeds University tee shirt.

We dined, Titus and I, by candlelight. He said suddenly, ‘It’s so romantic!’ We both laughed wildly.

Titus now looked curiously at Gilbert and Gilbert’s too impeccable performance, but asked no questions. I vaguely volunteered, ‘He’s an old actor, down on his luck’ and that seemed to account for him sufficiently for the present.

At dinner we talked of theatre and television. He seemed to have seen a remarkable number of London plays and knew the names of a great many actors. He described how he had directed The Admirable Crichton at school. He was modest, diffident about his ambition. ‘It’s just an idea.’ I did not press him, about this or about anything. We laughed a good deal.

He went to bed early, sleeping on cushions among my books in the front room downstairs. He expressed great interest in the books, but blew his candle out early. (I was watching from the stairs). At breakfast, he agreed to stay to lunch. I allowed the obsequious Gilbert to join us for general conversation at breakfast time. I did not want Gilbert to become an interesting mystery.

After breakfast I turned Titus loose to swim and explore the rocks, indicating that I would be busy with my ‘writing’. I thought it better not to crowd him with my company and in any case I wanted time to think. Titus seemed very happy, playing boyishly by himself. I watched his agile appearances and disappearances from the window with a piercing mixture of affection and envy. He returned at last bearing the errant table ostentatiously raised with one arm above his head. He put the table on the grass, then suggested that we should eat outside, but I vetoed this. (I agree with Mr Knightley about al fresco meals.) Gilbert meanwhile had been out shopping and had made, under my direction, a decent kedgeree with frozen coley.

At lunch, where Titus and I were again tete-a-tete, I decided it was time to speak seriously. I had had enough of gaining his confidence and refraining from scaring him. In any case my nerve was giving out and I wanted to know my fate.

‘Titus, listen, there’s something important I want to say to you.’

He looked alarmed and put one hand flat on the table as if ready to leap up and bolt.

‘I want you to stay here, for a time at any rate. I’ll explain why. I want you to see your mother.’

The eyes narrowed further, the pretty lips almost sneered. ‘I’m not going over there.’

‘I’m not suggesting you should. She will come over here.’

‘So you’ve told them. You said you wouldn’t.’

‘I haven’t told them. I’m just suggesting, asking you. If your mother knows you’re here she’ll come. There’s no need to tell him.’

‘She’ll tell him. She always does.’

‘She won’t this time, I’ll persuade her not to. I just want her to visit you here. Anyway, what can he do, even if he does know? He’s got to pretend to be pleased. There’s nothing to be afraid of.’

‘I’m not afraid!’

This was a bad start, I was fumbling and confused, and even as I spoke I imagined Ben snarling at the door.

Titus said thoughtfully, ‘I’m sorry for him in a way. He hasn’t had much of a life either, to use your phrase.’

‘A life is a life, to use yours. If you’re sorry for him you should all the more be sorry for her. She has grieved about you so much. Won’t you see her and make her happy?’

‘Nothing could make her happy. Nothing. Ever.’ The bland finality of the reply was dreadful.

‘Well, you can try!’ I said with exasperation. ‘It can’t be very nice for her not knowing what’s happened to you.’

‘OK then, you can tell her you saw me.’

‘That’s not enough. You must see her yourself. She must come here.’

Titus was looking handsomer again today, his cheeks lightly touched by the sun, his brighter softer hair framing the bony lumpiness of his face. The horrible tee shirt was already dry, but he was again wearing the striped shirt with the collar open.

‘Look, you said you saw them “occasionally”. That sounds odd to me. You were the bogy man for years, the devil himself. I can remember the desperate look in her eyes when your name came up. They can’t have forgiven you? All right, you haven’t done anything, but you know what I mean. Do you go round and play bridge or what?’

‘No, of course not. He still detests me, I imagine, and God knows what he really believes. Maybe he doesn’t know himself. But I’m beginning to think he doesn’t matter much.’

‘Why, pray?’

‘Because I think your mother is going to leave him.’

‘She never would. Never. No way.’

‘I think she would under certain circumstances. I think she would if she could only conceive of it as possible. If she saw it as possible she would see it as easy.’

‘But where would she go to?’

‘To me.’

‘You mean-you want her?’

‘Yes.’

‘And so you want me to persuade my mother to leave my father? You’ve got to be joking! That’s a lot to expect in return for lunch and dinner.’

‘And breakfast and tea.’

‘You’re a cool one.’

I was not feeling cool. Everything in this conversation was going wrong, being crudely, grossly presented. I was anxious not to drive him to any sudden reaction by striking too portentous a note. At the same time he must appreciate my seriousness. The maddening fact was that I now had all the pieces for a solution, but would I be allowed to fit them together? ‘My dear Titus, of course I don’t want you to persuade your mother of anything. I want you to see her because I know this would very profoundly relieve her mind. And I want you to see her here